Got To DANCE!!!

Check Out my Sweet-Assed Pillow Talk!

We got pounded yesterday and today by the same storm system that's ravaging the northeast states right now. It dumped snow over us all of yesterday and into this morning, which meant we had Valentine's Wednesday off for a day of fun (if your idea of "fun" is digging your way out of over a foot of snowfall).

So how was your weather?

I don't feel like it

Just for the record, it all got done anyway.

oops times two

oops times three

On Monday's comic I got the track listing for the Cloud Cult CD, "The Meaning of 8". I was going off of my instant download and used the order that iTunes gave me when I imported it there. The real track list (from off of their website) is as follows:

1. Chain Reaction
2. Please Remain Calm
3. Chemicals Collide
4. Pretty Voice
5. Brain Gateway
6. Take Your Medicine
7. Your 8th Birthday
8. Dance for the Dead
9. Everywhere All at One Time
10. Purpose
11. A Good God
12. Shape of 8
13. The Girl Underground
14. 2x2x2
15. Thanks
16. Alien Christ
17. The Deaf Girl's Song
18. Hope

Not sure where "The Song of the deaf Girl" goes, but I imagine between tracks 17 and 18 (though with my record for this week, I'm probably wrong there too).

Sorry about that.
Stupid iTunes.

oops

This one might take a little work.

Rachelle and I agree that it's really not that great a strip - and I just noticed a continuity error - but, whatever. There you have it...

Cloud Cult: The Meaning of 8

Here's the Cloud Cult website. It's a good record.

Saturday morning. Time for a comic.

Ain't that just the way it goes, though?

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming

Sorry about last week. Especially to you, Jeff.

Yet another cartoon by Jeff.


I don't get it.

Genius+Love=Jeff Pasek

Another cartoon by Jeff Pasek, another fine play against expectations.

No time for a full review, but some notes:

There is one line of dialogue. The primacy of its speaker - in the foreground of the composition - indicates a hero/protagonist role. The traditional romantic notions of this role are undercut by the behavior of the other characters. Note the position of the love interest: back turned towards the principal, she gazes lustily at the supposed villain. And, again, the white field separating the principal from his surroundings (and the yellow field linking the others together). The whole composition is ripe with the air of betrayed confidence.

The theme of the clandestine love is revealed as a comedic red herring, however, when we realize our hero was talking about the dog anyway.

Ha Ha...Huh?

My friend Jeff sent me this cartoon he drew the other day:





With this message:

not sure if this funny or not. i thought so at first but not sure why.

I had to agree.
While my first instinct was to laugh at the gag, I quickly doubled back and thought, "Wait... What's the joke here? This doesn't really seem like it should be funny. So why did I laugh?" It's curious and a bit troubling to be so unconsciously manipulated. But a careful study has, I believe, led me to the root of this quandary.

As an aside, the humor/puzzlement reaction also seems to me almost an ideal response to a successfully executed gag. To elicit a laugh, but then leave the audience wondering "why?" - perhaps even a bit embarrassed for laughing in the first place. What higher goal could there be than to induce the kind of internal tension that can only lead to the inevitable path of reflective self discovery? (Perhaps the only better response is to have made them laugh when they know they shouldn't).

So why is this cartoon funny? Beneath the faux-primitive trappings there is an intricate interplay of form and subtext here. Visual and verbal elements combine in complex fashion, each aspect carefully weighted for maximum effect. Much more than the sum of it's parts, the cartoon depicts a world both alien and somehow familiar, all to the ends of promoting a fine veil of comedic tension. Lets look at some of the components.

The whole of the design resembles a kind of digital mock-up of a torn paper assemblage. The two dimensional world it depicts is one of many layers. Space is merely suggested, and only by the scale and placement of the figures. Design plays a big part in how the joke unfolds.
The eye is immediately drawn to the high contrast field of jet-black to the far left of the composition. Solid and imposing, running the entire height of the cartoon, the bar symbolically represents a kind of barrier to this strange world. This immediately sets a tone of titillation, suggesting a forbidden nature to the proceedings. At the same time it paradoxically serves as a beacon and guide into the world of the cartoon. The slight tilt of the bar draws the eye up and to the left, directly into the narrative, as it were, and to the first line of dialogue.

"Hey! What's the banana for?" A question. An opening volley. The figure to which this line is attributed - a squat, buxom, hastily drawn caricature - juts an accusing finger towards the second - a lanky and open-stanced effigy. The contrast is plain. Where the first figure is compact and closed in on itself, the second is open and even welcoming to the aggressive advance of it's partner. Figure one resembles a kind of grotesque caricature of a fertility icon. Figure two resembles a guy holding up a banana. Following the curve of that figure leads to the last line of dialogue, another question. "Why? What did you have in mind?" This missive closes the composition leaving the reader to supply their own answer and complete to the gag themselves.

But there is a subtle guidance to how the gag should be completed, and it's pointed to in the dynamics of the design itself. Figure one seems, on the outset, to hold a position of dominance. Standing above and to the right of the other, it's arm juts out in aggressive attack. But upon further reflection, this aggression belies an overwhelming feeling of insecurity. The attacker is not at ease with it's place in the world, as indicated by it's form. Furthermore the figure is set off from the world by a halo of white, it's jagged black outline in sharp contrast to figure two's softer earth tones. Figure two, in fact, seems very much a part of it's surroundings, the lines echoing the colors of the world around it. Clearly figure one is not as secure in it's place in this world. This notion is enhanced by the visual treatment of the text. Where figure two's dialogue is a calm and confidant cursive script, figure one is represented by jagged block letters. A clumsy articulation of a supposed attack. This reversal of traditional dominant/submissive design rules creates a kind of nervous tension that in itself is, at least, giggle worthy.

This social dissonance goes deeper, however, as evident in the depictions of the characters themselves. Figure one is a twisted parody of femininity, suggesting perhaps an unexperienced transvestite or even an unassimilated transsexual. Figure two is a generic stand in for the everyman. Indeed, asexual in appearance, it could very well be anyone. Even you. If, like me, you are from a small town in Ohio, you can see just how uncomfortable an encounter of this nature could be. However, your avatar - by way of an easygoing demeanor and a quick thinking (and dare I say sexually suggestive?) retort, turns the table on the drag queens accusatory censure.

Funny.

The coup-de-grace, and visual punchline to the entire gag, deservedly take center stage in the composition. In addition to the psycho-sexual dynamic of the phallus - echoing the already finely wrought social-textural fabric - the artist makes good use of the long and storied history of the fruit-based gag. Bananas are instinctually funny. By far the funniest fruit, outpacing the tomato (whose humor is steeped too heavily in base humiliation) and kumquat (whose humor is purely verbal), the banana's comedic power is iconic and near ubiquitous. "What's the banana for?" the trannie asks. And we reply "What isn't it for?"

As far as I know, this is Jeff's first foray into the powerful form of cartoon narrative. That he could evoke this kind of response (even unto his self, it seems) is a testament to his innate ability to harness the forces of his cartoon graphics in such a subtly complex manner.

Impressions from an Emergency Roompart 8 (the end)

That's it.

Impressions from an Emergency Roompart 7

Impressions from an Emergency Roompart 6

impressions from an Emergency Roompart 5

Impressions from an Emergency Roompart 4

A bit of conversation with Derik Badman earlier this week - touched off by this Kevin Huizenga piece - kind of seeped in to this strip, altering the way I had originally designed it. I think it turned out much better.

Impressions from an Emergency Roompart 3

Impressions from an Emergency Roompart 2

Impressions from an Emergency Roompart 1

Christmas Follow-up

This is a doctored version of last years christmas strip. Here's the original.

I skipped any updates last week, in case you didn't notice. We had a CRAZY run-up to the holiday, including taking Sophie to the hospital twice to be treated for dehydration. She's fine now - but it was a rough week for us. I've written a multi-parter on that, which I'll serialize here next 'cause that's what I do when my kid gets sick, i guess.

And that'll take me into the next year.

Hope everyone's holidays are going well, and best wishes for the coming year...

I guess I didn't have anything else to write about

I save the day!

Going through my files, I came across parts of a graphic that I was working on in preparation for a Webcomics Examiner article.



It was a take off on Phil Sandifer's concept of the infinite gutter to be written jointly by Phil and myself. It was an argument on the unique properties of space that the web brings to comics.

Traditionally, comics are restricted to two dimensions; x-axis width, and y-axis height. Much of comics' mechanics takes place in mentally bridging the gap between panels in the x/y-axis (the gutter). Phil argues that webcomics feature an additional axis in terms of their available archives. Your eyes naturally traverse the finite x/y plane and the forward/back links traverse the "infinite" z-axis. Phil argues that as much mental activity is completed across strips as is between panels in one strip, hence the term "infinite gutter."

I don't completely buy into Phil's theory, especially with regards his (apparent) definition of space itself. While the x/y plane is quantifiable space the proposed z-axis is purely conceptual in nature. Can it still be called space? Do the same mechanics as x/y panel transitions apply? These questions and the resulting discussion would have been the basis for the article.

It pretty much looks like the article is a dead issue by now, as I haven't even heard from Phil in about a year and the Examiner seems pretty dead anyway. So I guess it's okay to publish these here.





So, there. It's kind of a comic and I posted it on Wednesday, so I'm still on track for the week! Hooray for me!

For the record, I do think that something happens between strips (mentally). And I also think that the archives offer under exploited potential for monkeying around with narrative.

world changes, slowly

Apparently Tuesday is the new Monday. Imagine that.

Lotsa overtime at work - wearin' me down...

I got a haircut

Counting with Sophie

Son of Stupid Cat

There's just something I like about drawing these stupid cat cartoons.

What I did on my Thanksgiving Vacation - Part Three

So that's it. I spent most of my holiday just eating and smarting off with my siblings, so I didn't get any drawing done. Took me all week to tell you what would normally take just a few seconds of conversation. Ah, the magic of comics.

We did have a nice Thanksgiving, though. The whole family met at my parents' house in Illinois; Aunts and Uncles, Cousins... my brother flew in to Cleveland and drove the rest of the way with us. My sister even flew in from England (sans husband, however). We don't have a chance to all meet like that very often, so we all had a good time, I think. First time driving ten hours with Sophie and she did all right. The worst part was getting stuck in the traffic heading out of Cleveland from the Browns/Bengals game last weekend (after dropping my brother off for his return flight). Two and a half hours to drive what would normally be a less than one hour drive! Other than that things were great.

The other thing we did this Thanksgiving is go around telling everyone that Rachelle is pregnant with our second child.

Because she is.

What I did on my Thanksgiving Vacation - Part Two

I'm thinking maybe the time constraint on these blog-comics and the size I have to draw them is putting a cramp on the device I'm playing with. The visuals carry the weight and I think they have to be used in just the right way for it to work. Not sure i'm pulling it off.

Still, I'm feeling better about this one than I did the first part. The lettering is more legible (which is good - the dialogue is slightly more important her than in part one). The panels are a little less muddy. I started to get into a working groove toward the end of this strip.

One more to go.

What I did on my Thanksgiving Vacation - Part One

Back from Illinois where we had a wonderful Thanksgiving with family, food, fun, and food. Gonna take a little bit tpo get back into the swing of things.

This here's part one of my vacation report. I'm playing a bit with a kind of narrative device. Not sure how well it'll work.

Hey! While I was away Steve Harrison and Adam White finished off their long-running story arc at Fabricari. Now you can read the whole shebang in one sitting (or two) from the beginning. Congratulations, guys!

Sometimes space = space, dammit

Don't strain your eyes too much on this. It basically amounts to a thumbnail for an infinite canvas comic I'll draw some day (maybe). It's a sketch comic that just got out of hand - needs some refinement...
Not all that bad, really. I figured It might give you a little more something to chew on as I'll be out of town, after tomorrow, for the Thanksgiving holiday and won't be posting anything elsefor a little while.

I hope you enjoy these tiny pictures.

Now, I'm not a big fan of the space=time equation that some use as shorthand for "comics," but I see where these people are coming from. Linear narrative defined through spatial relationship (panel to panel) is the primary focus of so much comics storytelling. This comic uses the linear-narrative, space/time relation quite a bit (though there are some "cheats" to that rule) but the thing I find more interesting, here, is the straight-on spatial relationships the narrative uses. This is one thing that I believe the infinite canvas concept could excel at - using relative spatial relationships to tell a story as much as panel to panel narration. Not to say this kind of thing isn't possible in fixed-ratio, page-through storytelling (some do it very well - Chris Ware, Tom Gauld... you know, the design-y, artsy types. Some of the old newspapermen, too; Herriman, McCay, King... but I digress ). I just think the expanded space give more opportunity to explore that relationship. I'm not saying that it's always been put to good use - PoCom UK, once you get past the novelty and all the pretty pictures (some by Ware and Gauld, actually), is a pretty boring way to use the space - it just brings up some interesting possibilities. Sometimes space can be used as just space, and an infinite canvas has plenty to spare.

But, oh wait... nobody even cares about infinite canvas anymore.

oh crap...


If you want something else to chew on, go check out the newly ressurrected Webcomics Examiner. Nobody does webcomics review like the Examiner, and it's return has been a long time coming.
Go welcome it back.

more stupid cat

I tried to check out a Mountain Goats cd from the library, and got They Might Be Giants instead.
I'm sure that this is some type of omen, I'm just not sure of what.

Two Nights, Two Shows

I have kind of mixed feelings on the Joanna Newsom show. Her performance was amazing - and I would definitely recommend seeing her live - but their were a lot of little annoying things to deal with that night (waiting forever for the show to start, sound problems at the beginning of the set, and I'm ashamed of the audiences behavior - especially toward opening act Billy Birdman)
I was already a huge fan of Joanna Newsom's music, however, and I found her performance worth muddling through the other stuff for. Really amazing, with the orchestration. Her new album is out now too. Incredible. Cannot recommend it enough.

Cloud Cult's show, on the other hand, was the kind of show that would make you a fan - even if you had never heard of them (and I suspect that was just the experience many in the audience that night had.) It was a near perfect show - the band was great, the sound was great in that little room (I hear that room is magic, or something), and it was just an excellent experience. Cloud Cult has 4 albums available and they said a new one is coming soon. I heard some of their new stuff at the show and it sounds pretty good!

All in all, it made for a memorable weekend. The whole thing was well worth all the shit I got at work for not coming in this weekend when everyone else had to.

Some days you got it, and some days you don't

Today I don't.


Yeah, so i went to two concerts this weekend. Cloud Cult and Joanna Newsom.
Both were excellent. I was working up a comic thing on them for my post today but, well...

Maybe for Wednesday.

Stupid Cat

Comics are capable of some pretty complex symbolic and narrative expression, but there's something satisfying about the simplest articulation of relative motion in sequence.

or something...



I saw Cloud Cult in Columbus last night. It was awesome.

New, Blue Ohio

Eraserhead?

I miss the comics

Hi. How are you?

Just playing around with a micron brushpen (what I had on me at the time). This is all I've drawn today so far. I think I may be coming down with something.

Now, look at some pictures of my cute kid:

Happy Anniversary and the Halloween comic that almost was.

Today is my wedding anniversary (and, conveniently enough, my wife's as well). For my sketch I drew the very first anniversary gift that I ever gave her. It was for our six month (dating) aniversary (yeah, cute, I know...). She had recently said something to the effect of "I could listen to that Modern English song, Melt With You, over and over and never get tired of it" (or something - I'm probably misremembering) So I took her at her word and made a tape of just that one song, over and over. Five times on each side (I taped over a short promotional cassette. Looking at the cover I made for it, I realize now that my design skills really haven't improved all that much since High School. Certainly my hand lettering is no better.
Anyway, Happy Anniversary honey.

Also today is the deadline for submissions to Jon Morris and Manning Krull's BOO! Halloween Stories 2006 I already told you about my one submission, but I was working on another as well, a proper story this time. Alas, once again I bit off more than i could chew. I'm about two pages short (out of six pages) and there's noway I could churn that out tonight. Maybe next year, huh?
Here's a sample, what would be page three of the story:




And there's my crappy hand lettering again.

Anyway, Happy Halloween everybody. And (again) Happy Anniversary Rachelle!

not a sketchless day without sketches

First of all, I've had a new piece up at Jon Morris and Manning Krull's BOO! Halloween Stories 2006. Actually it's a really old piece that some of you may even remember from my art skool daze. Or not. Whatever. Go check it out anyway.

I had a story that went with that once, but all I could find was an old photocopy of the first page:




Next order of business, check out this lady's seemingly grotesquely large hands (picture from the front page of our local paper today):



For some reason this photo struck me as really, really funny. Maybe I'm starting to lose it.

And, lest you may think I did not sketch anything today, we also have this:



I am not yet sure what all of this means but I am open to suggestions.

R.I.P, Fishstick

So, I walk into the office to scan in this sketch of our goldfish, Gus (aka Fishstick) and what do I find but said fish floating face up. Eerie coincidence? Some magical curse that kills whoever i draw?

Maybe it'd be a little more creepy if it wasn't already clear to us that he's been on his way out for the past few days. It's one of the reasons that I even drew the sketch (that's why he's floating kinda' sideways in the picture.) For whatever reason, I never chose to try and draw Fishstick until he was one foot in the grave (not counting my life with pets*). Turns out that fish are kind of fun to draw.

A funeral service will be held later today around the toilet bowl.



(* - I've been meaning to add updates to Pets for a while now. Interestingly, this is the first change in our animal parentage status since I originally posted it. That was one long-lived fish!)

It's a character sketch, of sorts...

But he'll end up a bit more cartoony in the final product.

just sketchtastical!

Another quick sketch towards the same comic as the last one. This is mostly for layout purposes and will look somewhat different if I ever finish the comic (*sigh*). For example: this is meant to be a subway station so I may throw a train and some more people in there. Also, the graffiti wil not actually spell out "graffiti."

but anyway...
this strikes me as kind of a crappy sketch, but it pretty much gets the layout that I want here.